Bernalillo County cancelled its Flock Safety contract and the cameras kept logging every license plate in the county anyway.
Three weeks later, Jevon Martinez drove around Bernalillo County and finished the job himself.
What Bernalillo County deputies did when they caught up to his truck is the part your local news won't show you.
How a Corporation Kept Spying on Bernalillo County After the County Said Stop
Flock Safety cameras photograph every vehicle that passes them.
Not suspects.
Not vehicles connected to open investigations.
Every car on every road.
Every plate logged into a searchable database that law enforcement can query without a warrant.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office decided it didn't want any part of that.
The county cancelled the contract.
They paid to end the relationship.
Then they waited for the cameras to come down.
Nobody came.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Flock's cameras kept photographing every plate in a county that had already told them to stop.
Martinez watched it happen for three weeks and then drove around and handled it himself.
He documented everything on social media rather than hide it: "Since BCSO is busy – I know BCSO is busy, everyone who works for BCSO, I know you guys are busy – I went ahead and helped you out."
He loaded camera after camera into his truck.
"We got a bunch of these bad boys," he said. "Let's see how much I can get in one day. That's gonna be the challenge for everyone out there."
Before delivering the cameras to the sheriff's office, he made his position clear: "Is this a crime? I don't think so. Neither does the public. I'm just liberating my people from tyranny."
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2095652508039561479“>https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2095652508039561479
Bernalillo County responded by sending deputies in tactical gear with weapons drawn.
Flock ran cameras in that county without authorization for twenty-one days.
No tactical response.
Jevon Martinez removed those cameras and drove them straight to law enforcement.
Deputies surrounded his truck.
https://twitter.com/WorldWatchGoat/status/2095474882515472423
What Flock Safety Was Actually Collecting on You
The pitch was simple: license plate readers catch car thieves.
What Flock didn't explain is what happens to everyone else's data.
Every plate from every car gets logged.
Every trip becomes a record.
That record sits in a database accessible to law enforcement agencies at any level on request.
No warrant.
No notice to you.
No requirement that you've done anything wrong.
The system doesn't know if you're a suspect.
It doesn't care.
You drove past a camera, so now your route is in a searchable file that someone can pull up without asking your permission.
At least 23 localities have cancelled their contracts.
A national map tracked 149 cities and counties pushing back.
Two Connecticut towns ended their contracts.
Two Massachusetts towns dropped Flock in August 2026 alone.
Minneapolis police used Flock data to locate individuals for immigration enforcement – in a city that had told the federal government it wasn't participating in that work.
The cameras sold as traffic safety tools were being accessed for purposes the cities that bought them never agreed to.
Flock announced security changes in August 2026.
When a company needs to announce security changes to stop a wave of contract cancellations, what they're announcing is that the original pitch wasn't the whole story.
The 149 communities cancelling contracts figured that out.
More people are asking where their license plate is stored tonight and who can pull it up without asking them first.
The Man Who Did What the County Already Paid to Have Done
Martinez is going to face charges in a New Mexico courtroom.
The county will call it vandalism.
But Flock's cameras had no authorization to operate in Bernalillo County.
The contract was cancelled.
The county paid to end it.
The legal question Martinez's lawyers are going to press – whether removing unauthorized surveillance equipment constitutes vandalism – is not the slam dunk Bernalillo County thinks it is.
What the government's response tells you is more important than any of that.
A corporation ran illegal surveillance in Bernalillo County for three weeks.
Nobody showed up.
A citizen removed that illegal surveillance and delivered it to law enforcement.
Tactical units arrived.
The government moved fast to arrest the man who took the cameras down.
It didn't move at all to stop the company that kept them running without permission.
The 149 communities doing this through votes and city council decisions are winning the same argument Martinez made with his hands.
They're winning it without getting arrested.
Martinez did it the harder way and will pay a higher price for it.
But the image of deputies in tactical gear surrounding a truck full of cameras that a corporation was running illegally in a county that already said stop – that image is the whole argument.
He called it liberation.
Look at who showed up with weapons drawn to tell him he was wrong.
America needs fewer “security” companies leeching off taxpayers under the guise of safety.
We need more sworn law enforcement acting like sheep dogs. . . frankly, acting more like Jevon Martinez than the wolves calling themselves flock.
If flocking America is the “New America” then it doesn’t matter if you call it New Mexico or New America.
These things aren’t mere security cameras.
If you thought China’s TikTok data skimmers were a problem, you definitely shouldn’t want these things on every corner.
Sources:
- David Lindfield, "New Mexico Man Tears Down Every Flock Surveillance Camera in His County," Slay News, September 4, 2026.
- Newsweek, "Map Shows 149 Cities Pushing Back Against Flock Cameras," Newsweek, 2026.
- NewsNation, "Flock Camera Contracts Canceled in 23 Localities as Controversy Grows," NewsNation, 2026.
- Washington Examiner, "How Flock Cameras Help Lead ICE to Illegal Immigrants," Washington Examiner, 2026.